The face of Kaimuki High School sophomore Tre Paderes — the captain of the Bulldogs' JV football team — shone bright yesterday afternoon as he described to a stranger the joy of playing sports.

"When I do something good and hear people cheering for me, I feel happy, I feel real good," said Paderes, who will turn 16 in November. "It makes me want to work hard, 110 percent."

But when told that public school JV athletics were at risk of being eliminated before Thursday night's Board of Education vote to spare the sports programs from a $1 million budget cut, Paderes' wide-angle smile straightened out and the look on his face turned into one of stunned disbelief.

"If they took away JV, we would be down, we wouldn't play any sports," Paderes said. "I think choke guys would just dig out, not even come school ..."

The proposed budget cut, part of $9.2 million worth of reductions requested by Gov. Linda Lingle for the Department of Education, would have effectively wiped out the public schools' JV programs for the school year 2009-2010. The athletic programs were spared only after the BOE voted 7-4 in favor of a motion to send the proposed overall cuts back to the DOE with sports and other smaller-budget items removed from consideration.

The decision came after about four hours of sometimes impassioned public testimony and followed some debate among the board.

"By eliminating items (from cut considerations), we are creating sacred cows," Board chairperson Donna Ikeda said shortly before the vote was called. "Listening to testimony and considering new information ... I have no problem with that. But we need to look at all programs, all programs should be on the table."

Board member Denise Matsumoto also expressed concerns about the motion, first offered by Breene Harimoto and moved to be amended by John Penebacker. Matsumoto asked for confirmation that should athletics and the other programs be excluded from cut considerations in the motion, they could not be touched "by even one dollar."

When Penebacker answered, "Yes," Matsumoto said she could not support the motion.

When the vote for the amended motion came out 7-4 in favor, Ikeda expressed displeasure.

"I think we've just done a bad thing, this is very bad policy," Ikeda said. "It is one thing to listen to testimony and consider new information, but to have a knee-jerk reaction to public (pleas) ... ultimately we will not be looked at as good decision-makers."

Ikeda again emphasized that "all programs need to be looked at, because none are less valuable than others" to those who support them.

Assistant schools superintendent Daniel Hamada said the DOE will receive the original proposal — minus the approximately $2.4 million targeted for cutting athletics and other smaller programs requested by the Board motion — and again search for areas where cuts can be made.

"They (the BOE) make the call, then we gotta see what the Department has to do next," said Hamada, who was part of the leadership group that decided on the original proposed cuts. "We'll look at alternatives, but the bottom line is we have to cut from somewhere. Now we have more clarity and we have to see what the next steps are."

In addition to athletics, other programs spared by the approved motion include the popular Challenger Center of Hawai'i space education lab based at Barbers Point Elementary School and the Hawaiian Museum at Nanaikapono Elementary School.

Several people testified on behalf of both of those programs Thursday night.

"We just have to reassess what else is out there," Hamada said. "We have to look at what is fundamental (to education), because we still want to honor classroom learning and have to ensure that basic services are being met."

At the end of the testimony portion of Thursday's BOE meeting, Linda Smith, Lingle's policy adviser, asked the board to look into a revised travel policy for the schools in light of a recent trip to Orlando, Fla., by 652 DOE personnel for a conference on model schools. Lingle had said the trips cost a total of $1.2 million; the BOE said both federal and DOE funds were used.

"You have some crucial decisions to make," Smith said, during a lengthy debate with the board. "Do you really need so many people to go to the same place for the same purpose?"

Harimoto said Lingle's position on the travel issue contradicts her earlier requests to give individual schools more autonomy in budget decisions.

Read his blog on prep sports at http://preptalk.honadvblogs.com.